Butterfly Effect

T, my roomie, has a book on how to handle difficult people. I wonder if the book has tips specifically for handling difficult aunt. Let me picture her for you: she’s good looking, elegant, workaholic, single woman, in her late 50s. She’s also rather difficult to please. In the beginning, our relationship was not too bad. I did notice that she could be rather hostile to other people.

This is why, whenever I’m at her place I tried to be very very very careful. But, I must have not been careful enough. I could not really pinpoint which incident annoyed her so much that she has to be snappish to me all the time. I stayed over at her place for the weekend and as usual, I left feeling all depressed with huge WHYs floating in my mind.

Why did I even come to her place? Why does our tradition dictate that we have to build good rapport with everyone within our extended family? Why do I find myself trying to ‘mend’ our relationship when probably, that was not what she wanted? Why? Why?!?

I could answer one of the WHYs though. When I was younger , she was someone that I looked up to - apart from my own mum, a role model per se, and she still is.